Page 93 of Don't You Forget About Me
‘This is so brutal. I’m so sorry.’
We sit and listen to Keith snoring.
‘You said you and your dad were close, right?’ Lucas says.
‘Yes.’
‘Then your dad knew you loved him. And he loved you. Tell me this, if he were here, if he could have another five minutes, what would he be saying to you? Would he be saying – “I can’t believe you were mad at me last time I saw you?”
I think about it, and shake my head.
‘No, exactly. He’d be saying, I’m so sorry I let you down at the end. But you don’t need his apology. And he wouldn’t need yours.’
This is so insightful and sensitive that I barely have words.
‘Thank you,’ I say. ‘Thank you so much for saying that.’
Lucas looks at me intently.
‘This happened when you were eighteen?’ he asks.
‘Yeah. Eighteen. My first term at university, the winter.’
At first, I could swear that the age lands as significant to him. And just as quickly, the suspicion passes, and I think: wait, was thatnota flicker of recognition? But someone straining, trying to place you because you’ve attained a new significance?
‘A few months after we finished sixth form,’ I say, chancing my arm.
‘That’s a tough age to have the rug pulled from under you,’ Lucas says.
‘So much so. You barely know who you are yourself, you need your parents to carry on being themselves.’
‘Sure. I don’t think I knew who I was or anyone else was until about twenty-five. Kind of nice, that innocence, in retrospect.’
Are we speaking in code?
‘Oh, speaking of cheating men,’ I say, to move things on more than a desire to discuss it, ‘You were right about Robin. He ran into my parents in a supermarket and did a number on them about his devotion to me. It means he already knew I was working here when he came in.’
‘Jesus. I can’t say I’m surprised though.’
‘Do you know, I’d assumed it was chance he met my parents and he’d not be staking Waitrose out, and right as I’m telling you, I’m not so sure.’ I pause. ‘He thinks he can do things in name of this love for me, which is fictional horseshit.’
Lucas says: ‘Georgina. It might not be true, but be careful. Something I’ve learned is people do much worse things to you in the name of love, than they ever do as your enemy.’
On my journey home, dark streets scrolling past my window, I turn these words over and over until I am not sure if I am imagining a look of total understanding that passed between us as he uttered them. Something shifted between Lucas and me tonight, I’m just not quite sure what.
30
The resolution with Geoffrey is a non-resolution, an impasse, rather than a truce – he won’t apologise, I won’t apologise.
I’d be quite happy never to see the Tizer-haired old walrus as long as I live, but it’s problematic if I want any sort of relationship with my mum. And that weekend, a social occasion comes up where I have to choose if I’m going to boycott: Esther’s Sunday lunch.
I wrestled with various evasions or outright refusals and then thought, why should he get to still go to things like that, while I behave like the outcast? Sod him.
Esther suggests I arrive half an hour before official kick-off so that it’s my feet under her dining room table when they arrive, as a symbolic gesture, and I gratefully do as I’m told.
Unfortunately, both of us forget Geoffrey is the sort of nightmare guest who thinks turning up forty-five minutes before he’s been invited is an act of conspicuous efficiency, as opposed to wildly inconsiderate. His shiny new reg Volvo is squatting on the drive like Mr Toad’s chariot when the taxi drops me off.
It irks me so much that Mum is a passenger in this, both literally and figuratively. I hope I’m never in a marriage where I don’t feel I can say:No we’re not setting off an hour early so our hostess has to grit her teeth and miss the shower she’d planned, sit back down.
